Bluetooth, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Ultra Wideband (UWB) represent radio technologies which are becoming increasingly popular in mobile devices. Establishing a secure connection between two devices using one of these technologies or bearers requires that a shared secret be established between the two devices. When the shared secret is in place, the link is secure because a session key derived from the shared secret can be used to encrypt data sent over the created link. The procedure for the establishment of a shared secret is critical and currently differs between the bearers.
Additionally, Bluetooth and WLAN are two different technologies that can be used to create IP ad-hoc networks. Ad-hoc networks are becoming increasingly important in mobile devices. Bluetooth Personal Area Networking (PAN) is the Bluetooth Profile used to transmit IP packets over Bluetooth links. Bluetooth PAN enables the creation of ad-hoc networks. Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol (BNEP) is defined as part of Bluetooth PAN Profile. PAN Profile describes how to use Bluetooth Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) to discover the PAN capabilities of other devices. Ad-hoc WLAN is the operation mode of WLAN where no access point is used and devices communicate directly forming and ad-hoc network. Bluetooth PAN and ad-hoc WLAN are totally independent of each other and are alternative technologies which can be used for the same purpose. However, Bluetooth PAN and ad-hoc WLAN have very different characteristics. An increasing number of mobile devices are beginning to support both technologies.
In part because of the constantly increasing number of options available on mobile devices, users often become confused by the number of options their mobile devices offer for short range connections. The differences between systems such as WLAN and Bluetooth are often a mystery to the average user. Additionally, in the case of forming ad-hoc networks, Bluetooth PAN and WLAN need different mechanisms and different user interfaces to setup an ad-hoc network. Currently, this is very difficult for ad hoc WLAN. Furthermore, WLAN currently does not support the discovery of nearby devices (as Bluetooth does), because WLAN radio is normally turned off due to its high level of power consumption.
As more bearer technologies, such as UWB based Wireless universal serial bus (Wireless USB) or WiNet, get added to devices, this confusion is likely to worsen. In addition to users not understanding the meaning of the different bearers, the fact that security must be configured differently for each bearer means that the configuration step is often skipped altogether. This results in confusion and can lead to security problems in the field. These problems result directly from the fact that the procedures for establishing secure short range links between devices are non-uniform for different bearers. For example, a likely user scenario involves a user wanting to send a picture to his or her friend's device, with the friend standing nearby. Both users have phones equipped with both Bluetooth and WLAN, but neither person knows which of these systems are currently active for the other person's device. The result can often be that the two devices fail to find each other, and the two users ultimately lose faith in the entire feature. If the two users do ultimately succeed in finding each other's devices, they may only send the picture from one device to the other while avoiding the extra effort of trying to make the link a secure link due to the additional complexity that is involved.